


Two Points and a Line

by Iambic



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-26
Updated: 2010-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-06 17:16:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iambic/pseuds/Iambic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claire keeps doing what she does best. She also ignores Topher.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Points and a Line

**Author's Note:**

> S1 compliant only; written for dollficathon before Epitaph One came out.

Even after discovering that her existence has been nothing more than a lie concocted by a madman with a machine for a company that could easily pay for three real doctors, Claire doesn't give it up. Doesn't leave, or demand her real self back. Isn't sure she even wants to. For one thing, she knows that she's got a contract, somewhere – one that might have expired, but might not have. For another, she doesn't know her way around the real world. She doesn't know how to be anything but a doctor, because that is what she was created for.

She keeps doing the only thing she knows how to do. She also ignores Topher.

Victor ceases to be Victor the doll and instead becomes Esteban, one of the many caretakers of the unprogrammed Actives. Claire never really gave them much thought before, other than the idle conversations they would sometimes engage her in – now she wonders if these people are all just shells, rewritten to suit their new task. She seeks out deformities, and one some she finds them – a limp, a scar, a shortness of breath. A few are simply older, maybe too old to be useful in their former field. And some aren't visibly deformed, aren't too old. Either they are real employees, or Claire's missing something.

She could ask Topher. This would mean actually acknowledging his existence again, which is something she really doesn't want to do. And in a choice between learning something she's not sure she wants to know, and continuing to ignore Topher, there is no choice at all.

\--

Life goes on. Actives are injured on the job, and Claire patches them up. Echo keeps saying cryptic things that probably aren't supposed to hold so much meaning as Claire attaches to them. Boyd keeps worrying. She sees him sometimes, watching her, like he's not sure what to do about her. She's not sure what to do with him. He could have been a friend, once, but there's a line between free will and programming, and they both know which side of it the other falls on.

She doesn't want to – but she resents Boyd for having that certainty, that knowledge of who he is. That's a privilege she's lost, the privilege to wake up and know that she's exactly where she is because of the choices she's made in life. That for better or worse, she brought about her own fate. She can't blame herself for her life, and it's both freeing and unfair.

She knows who's to blame. Maddening Topher, with his awkward phrasing and his lack of morals and the way he's always so much better than everyone because he's intelligent. Condescending Topher, who knows he's safe up in his little techie dreamhouse, while the Actives go out and risk themselves every day, and Claire deals with the direct results. The messes she patches up are so much more meaningful and lasting than the messes he wipes away.

She didn't always want to be a doctor. Or maybe she did. But she's also been a criminal and a call girl and a thousand other things she doesn't want to know about, and in the end the person she might have wanted to be is just another set of ones and zeros saved on a hard drive, gathering dust.

\--

Then comes the day they can't immediately wipe Sierra because she's got this gaping head wound, and Claire has to stitch it up while Sierra as escort makes tight, caustic comments about the likelihood of another job and the difficult process involved with removing blood from hair.

Topher hovers, awkward and nervous, outside the door. He looks inexplicably concerned, like he didn't get the memo that Sierra's still an Active even when she's got the imprint. Like he actually cares what happens to anyone.

"Get out of my way," Claire snaps at him as she passes the door, on her way to fetch more gauze. It's the first time she's spoken to him in months.

Three months, actually. Not that she's counting.

\--

She stops making excuses to leave any room he enters and starts just pretending he's not there. It works a lot better, because Topher has apparently given up on trying to get her attention. He's being sneaky. If she needs to know something about an Active's condition, the Active will somehow know about it. It takes Claire longer to figure out that Boyd shouldn't be the one discussing the fitness for action of a given Active – didn't originally know this much about the process.

Apparently Topher thinks he's getting away clean by just not talking to her.

It's not that Claire has this unrelenting thirst for revenge. It's not that she wants to see someone else suffer. But she thought – obviously incorrectly – that Topher had actually given a damn about her. She had thought that maybe, because he seemed a little bit contrite, he hadn't wanted to see her unhappy. Maybe he had a little bit of a conscience after all.

Unsurprisingly, that doesn't make her feel any better. Surprising, that only annoys her further. How dare he do what he does anyway? How dare he have a reason to feel sorry, specifically sorry, for what he's done, and let it slide away like that?

How many other people has he done this to?

Claire toughens up and confronts him, over the recently-vacated wipe chair. "I'm not the only one, am I?" she demands, while he looks up, surprised, because this he definitely couldn't have expected.

"Wait, wait, back up," he says. "There was a beginning to this conversation that I wasn't part of. What are you talking about?"

"Actives!" Claire spits, and the anger rises up in horrified fury once again, like that first day when she thought to look 'Whiskey' up in the database. "How many of the people working here are Actives?"

Topher glances at the nearest computer – an escape route. "I can check the numbers of functional Actives –"

"No!" Claire says. "Look me in the face and tell me what you know."

Topher gives the computer a longing glance and looks up at her, like she knew he would. He doesn't look upset, or guilty, just a little bit nervous. Topher has always been a coward. "There are, um, twenty-six designations in each sector. In this one, five designations are out of action. One of them is, uh, Alpha, one's Victor, and one of them is, uh, you."

"And the others?"

Topher laughs, nervous and hurried. "That's classified. I can't tell you that."

"It'll show up in their medical files," Claire says, a final bluff.

"No," says Topher, "actually, it won't."

\--

Two nameless Actives, loose in the dollhouse. Claire keeps an eye out for glitching, hacks as many personnel files as she dares, and even asks Boyd one day. But each attempt draws a blank. The dollhouse keeps its secrets.

She can't seem to go back to refusing to acknowledge Topher's existence. She catches him looking at her a few times, from on high. He looks slightly condescending, slightly pitying, entirely infuriating. She doesn't meet his eyes or let him know she knows he's watching, but when he's not looking she stares right back. She's not sure if it's a challenge or a search or something else entirely.


End file.
